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[Pages S5045-S5058]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMPREHENSIVE ADDICTION AND RECOVERY ACT OF 2016--CONFERENCE REPORT--
Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to talk about the
pace of judicial confirmations with my friends, the Senator from Hawaii
and the Senator from Massachusetts, who have been real leaders on this
issue.
Well, we have only one more day of legislative session before
Congress breaks until September. It is an appropriate time to take
stock of how the majority has handled their job of scheduling and
confirming judges. More than a year into this new Congress, the
Republican leadership has allowed only 22 judges to be confirmed--only
22. In the last 2 years of the Bush administration with a Democratic
majority--the mirror situation of what we are in today--there were 68.
So that is 68 versus 22.
The Republican majority is confirming judges at the slowest rate in
more than 60 years. This has real consequences across America.
Vacancies have risen from 43 to 83 since Republicans took over the
majority; 29 have been judicial emergencies. I know that in my city of
Buffalo in Western New York we had an emergency. We have one of the
busiest courts, and for a while we had no judges. Now we have one.
At this point in time in the Bush administration, with Democrats in
control of the Senate, we had reduced the number to 39. That is half as
many vacancies as now exist. From the district courts to the Federal
courts of appeal, all the way up to the Highest Court in the land, the
Republican majority has been showing the American people that when it
comes to judges, they just are not doing their job.
This is hardly a Senate that is back to work. The nuts and bolts of
governing is the process of nominations, especially for the judiciary.
By this measure, the Republican Senate and its Judiciary Committee are
not back to work; they are sleeping on the job. There is no better
example of it than the irresponsible, partisan blockade of President
Obama's Supreme Court pick, now in its fifth month.
The speedy application of justice, the right to petition the
government for redress of grievances is a bedrock of American values
enshrined in the Constitution. This is not an abstract concept. It has
real, everyday consequences for American litigants. Justice delayed is
justice denied.
Without judges on the bench, justice is denied for a woman who was
unjustly fired, suing to get back her job and support her family.
It is denied for a small business owner seeking to resolve a contract
dispute and keep his stores open. Any small business owner can tell you
that when lawsuits hang over them, whether they are plaintiffs or
defendants, it causes them sleepless nights. My dad was a small
business man. Our Republican colleagues are just twiddling their
thumbs.
It is denied for criminal defendants who deserve to have their cases
heard in a courtroom before an impartial judge and a jury of their
peers. This matters in so many of the States, including my home State
of New York.
[[Page S5046]]
One of the judges who has been languishing on the calendar is Gary
Brown. He is currently serving as a magistrate judge in the Eastern
District of New York. He has been nominated for a seat on the Islip
court, a crowded bench. Long Island has 3 million people, more than
many States. That seat has been vacant for 18 months--18 months.
The small business people in Long Island who need these cases settled
and the many others who are awaiting justice are in anguish. Our
Republican colleagues just sit there. We know why. The American people
know why too. They are not doing their jobs.
Gary Brown is eminently qualified for this seat. As a magistrate
judge, he heard a number of cases related to the fallout from
Superstorm Sandy. Only through Judge Brown's intelligence and integrity
were deficiencies in the insurance claims process uncovered, and
hundreds of homeowners began to recoup their losses. So we need a Judge
Brown. The people of Long Island need a Judge Brown. Without judges on
the bench, we are diminishing that corps.
Our majority leader likes to talk about the fact that the Senate is
working again. Give me a break. If you can't even appoint judges, how
can you say the Senate is working? There is no good reason other than
the usual political games, games that Democrats did not play when we
were in the same position in the last 2 years of George Bush's term and
we had the Senate majority.
Well, we have 1 day left before we break. Yet this body has failed to
pass adequate legislation dealing with Zika, failed to pass real
funding on the opioid crisis, failed to pass sensible gun safety
measures after another senseless tragedy in Orlando, and failed to fill
our benches, whether it is the Supreme Court, the circuit courts, or
the district courts.
Our Republican majority owes it to the American people to make some
progress on judges before Members run for the hills. We should not be
adjourning with this many vacancies, this many judicial emergencies. It
is time to confirm these uncontroversial nominees. I say to every one
of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, particularly the
majority leader, it is time to do your job.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session
to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 11, 27, 28, 29,
30, 31, 359, 362, 363, 364, 459, 460, 461, 505, 508, 569, 570, 571,
572, 573, 597, 598, 599, and 600; further, that the Senate proceed to
vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations; and that,
if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon
the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and, of
course, I will. I would like to put all this in perspective and talk
about the theatrics that we sometimes call the discussion on the Senate
floor. You know, I think that we have a tendency here--maybe it is
because we are busy and we have got a lot of other things we are doing,
but we have a tendency to have very short memories.
We should remember that we confirmed a judge last week and the prior
week. In fact, one of those judges was a judge put forth, supported by
Senators from the State of New Jersey, both Democrat Senators. We moved
forward with the confirmation.
I also want to talk a little bit about history because I am new here.
But my facts seem to stand in contrast to what is discussed on this
floor from week to week. When it comes to judicial nominations, the
President has been treated much more fairly, I would submit, than
President George W. Bush. To date, the Senate has confirmed 329 of
President Obama's judicial nominations. At this point, President Bush
had only 312 judicial nominations confirmed.
In fact, President Obama has now surpassed President Bush in terms of
the total judicial nominees confirmed for the entire Presidency of
George W. Bush. During his entire Presidency, the Senate confirmed only
326 of President Bush's judicial nominations. We have already confirmed
329. So I would submit, that is getting the work done. That is getting
the job done. That is doing our job.
I know the other side of the aisle does not like the fact that they
don't set the floor agenda. But any reasonable, objective review of the
record demonstrates that President Obama has been treated more fairly
than his predecessor, George W. Bush.
So, for that reason, I do object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, Donald Trump spent years pedaling Trump
University, a sham college that his own former employees refer to as
one big, fraudulent scheme. Now he is being sued for fraud and, worse,
for targeting the most vulnerable people he could find, lying to them,
taking all their money and then leaving them in debt.
Now, the judge presiding over Trump's case is Gonzalo Curiel, a
former Federal prosecutor who has spent decades quietly serving his
country, sometimes at great risk to his own life. The Republican
Governor who first appointed him calls him an American hero, and he was
confirmed with bipartisan support from the Senate.
Like all district court judges, Judge Curiel's work is not political
so he is following the law in the Trump University case, but Donald
Trump wants Judge Curiel to bend the law to suit Trump's own personal
financial interests and Trump's very, very fragile ego.
A little over a month ago, Trump began savagely attacking the judge's
integrity and his Mexican-American heritage at political rallies. Some
Republicans in Congress claimed to be shocked by the assault on our
legal system. Paul Ryan called Trump's attack the ``textbook definition
of a racist comment.''
Oh, please. Spare me the false outrage. Where do you suppose Donald
Trump got the idea that he can demean judges with impunity? He got it
from Republicans right here in Congress.
It is bad enough that Senate Republicans will not even give Merrick
Garland, the President's Supreme Court nominee, a hearing--while the
Republicans' allies spend billions of dollars conducting a nonstop
campaign of slime against him. But the story is actually much bigger
than Judge Garland.
Sixteen noncontroversial district court judicial nominees--16--are
waiting to take their seats alongside Judge Curiel on the Federal
bench. They have been investigated, they have gone through hearings,
and they have been voted out of committee. About half have been sitting
there for more than a year.
But in a few days, the Republicans who control the Senate are
planning to pack up and shut down this body for most of the rest of the
year, leaving every single one of these men and women to twist in the
wind. Why? Because in 6 months Donald Trump might be President. Make no
mistake, Republicans want Donald Trump to appoint the next generation
of judges. They want those judges to tilt the law in favor of big
businesses and billionaires like Trump. They just want Donald Trump to
stop being so vulgar and obvious about it.
It is ridiculous. If Republicans expect the American people to
believe they don't agree with Trump's disgraceful attacks on an
independent judiciary, they should confirm these judges.
We have just one message for the Republicans: Do your job--now--
before shutting off the lights and leaving town. At least confirm the
13 noncontroversial district court judges who were nominated before
2016.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to
executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos.
359, 362, 363, 364, 459, 460, 461, 508, 569, 570, 571, 572, and 573;
that the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on
the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or
debate; that no further motions be in order to the nominations; that
any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be
immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume
legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
[[Page S5047]]
Sometimes when I come to the Senate floor, I can't help but think
that people who are watching me in the Gallery and watching on C-SPAN
are thinking: What's going on? I thought we were working on funding the
veterans, coming up with a solution to Zika, funding the DOD, making
sure States and localities have adequate resources to combat drug
addiction and the opioid epidemic. Instead, we get floor speeches that
have nothing to do with doing our jobs.
I am doing my job today in objecting to these measures so we can
actually get back to the pressing matters that hopefully will get
passed out of the Senate before we go to the state work period and
return in September.
Mr. President, for that reason, I object to the motion from the
distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I am not sure what version of the
Constitution you are reading that doesn't say confirming judges is part
of doing your job in the U.S. Senate.
These judges have all been completely vetted, they are
noncontroversial, and they have bipartisan support. The amount of time
it would take to get these judges confirmed is simply: Don't object.
Let us go forward.
We hear a lot of talk these days from Republicans in Congress
suddenly caring about the rule of law. Talk is cheap. Real cases are
piling up. Real courts are starved for help. Real justice is being
denied, and the American people aren't easily fooled. If Senate
Republicans leave town without putting a single one of these highly
qualified, noncontroversial judicial nominees on the bench, they are
making it clear that for them politics is everything 24/7, that
politics trumps everything, even an independent judiciary.
Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank Senators Schumer, Warren, and
others for their efforts to get some movement on these neglected
judicial nominees. When we talk about the Senate doing its job, of
course confirming judges is a part of the Senate's job. In fact, only
the Senate can do that job.
So far 23 of the 24 nominees on the Executive Calendar were approved
by the Judiciary Committee by voice vote, including 16 district court
nominees. This includes Hawaii's own Clare Connors. Before I speak
about Clare, I want to also mention that she and the other nominees
before us today--who were unanimously approved by the Judiciary
Committee--will be kept from serving on the Federal bench, kept from
doing those jobs because of Republican inaction.
I will tell you something about Clare. She has wide-ranging
experience, including district and appellate venues, criminal and civil
arenas, and litigation on issues ranging from tax law to tough cases
such as crimes against children.
I met with Clare in Hawaii and when she came before the Judiciary
Committee. She is more than qualified to serve on the Federal bench
today. Senator Grassley has indicated that Republicans will shut down
the nomination process this month, even though vacancies have nearly
doubled.
If Clare is not confirmed, the Hawaii district court seat would be
left vacant for a year. Historically, the Senate has held confirmation
votes on widely supported nominees into September of a Presidential
election year.
The nominees before us all have bipartisan support and come from
States throughout the country: Tennessee, New Jersey, New York,
California, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Utah, and of course Hawaii.
I urge my Republican colleagues to do their job.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to
executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos.
359, 362, 363, 364, 459, 460, 461, and 508; further, that the Senate
proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations
in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made
and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no
further motions be in order to the nominations; that any related
statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately
notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative
session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from North Carolina.
Unanimous Consent Request--Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 2577
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
I wish to just touch briefly on what the distinguished Senator from
Hawaii mentioned regarding vacancies. If you take a look at the average
number of vacancies over the last 25 years or so, during every
presidency, the average vacancy rate has been higher than it is in
2016. It is a natural part of the process that when judges move up to
senior status, we are filling the vacancies. This goes up and down.
This is not a crisis. It is no different than a situation the Senate
has dealt with long before I got here.
Mr. President, so that we can dispense with these matters and move
back onto the legislation before us that can fund the VA, that can
address the Zika crisis and do things that we need to do before we get
out of town, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I want to get back on doing my job. I
promised the people of North Carolina I was going to help fund the VA.
That is why I am proud to be a member of the Veterans' Affairs
Committee. I told the soldiers down at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune and
across this Nation we were going to work to fund the Department of
Defense.
What I wish to do is see if we can get back to these matters that are
necessary and important. They will save lives. They will equip our men
and women to take the fight wherever we may go.
Today I want to talk specifically about the MILCON-VA-Zika bill that
is before us. It is a conference report. For those who are not familiar
with conference reports, they are unamendable. We need an up-or-down
vote, and we need to send it to the President's desk.
That is what lies before us. That is a bill we can pass this year,
funding that the Democratic conference in large numbers supported at
$1.1 billion when it went to the House.
What is that funding going to do? It is going to fund remediation
programs to make sure we don't have an epidemic that is spread through
mosquito bites. Right now, the known U.S. cases are all travel related,
but we are afraid of that threat--particularly as mosquito season sets
in across the Nation. It has been going on in North Carolina and the
South for several months. We want to give local health professionals
and the CDC the resources they need to find a vaccine that the CDC
promises we can get in a matter of 18 months, and we want to make sure
we do everything we can to educate people about the potential dangers
of this disease. That is what approving this conference report will do.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2577 and that
the conference report be agreed to with no intervening action or
debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object, and I am
going to say a few words.
I say to my friend, the junior Senator from North Carolina, this is
the first time I have ever heard anyone say the problem with the judges
is it is just one of those things, let's not worry about it, it happens
all the time--but that is not true. Around America today, we have a
number of extremely important judicial emergencies, meaning we have all
these judicial districts where there are not enough judges to do the
work.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Having practiced law quite a few
years, it is very hard to go to a court and be told: We are sorry, but
the judge is doing all civil cases today. He has no time for criminal
cases--or vice versa.
So I appreciate his succinctness saying: Well, this is no big deal.
Don't worry about the judges.
We are worried about the judges. It is very difficult.
[[Page S5048]]
Let's move on to the second subject he brought up, the second
subject--judges are no big deal. I think that is a tremendously big
deal and so do the American people.
Once again, the Senator from North Carolina seeks to pass the very
partisan VA-Military Construction-Zika bill. Yes, he said--for those
not familiar with the conference reports, I am familiar with lots of
them. I have been through lots of conference reports. I understand the
rules, but I also understand that we as a body can do anything we want
to do. That is the way the Senate operates. We have the ability to
change the rules in a manner of minutes and move on to change what is
before this body. We know the reason the Republican leader cannot move
forward on a Zika funding bill that is reasonable is because the House
of Representatives is unreasonable.
We passed out of this body a very good bill. It wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted $1.9 billion that the Centers for Disease Control and the
National Institutes of Health said they need--$1.9 billion. But I said:
OK, $1.1 billion will help a tremendous amount. It is emergency
spending, no offsets.
So we agreed and sent it to the House. Eighty-nine Senators voted for
it. The Democrats voted for it and the vast majority of Republicans
voted for it. That was good. It wasn't perfect, but it was good.
So what did the House of Representatives do? They filled this report,
this conference report. They ignored what we had done in the Senate,
and they decided they were going to stick some of their favorite poison
pills onto this legislation. Why? Because the Speaker, to his credit,
is trying--but he is not doing much good over there. He is finding that
Speaker Boehner couldn't do much better than he has done. That is why
Boehner left. He couldn't handle it because, as Boehner used to call
them, the ``crazies'' take over that caucus.
They have a rule in the House, Mr. President--and the Presiding
Officer used to serve in the House of Representatives. All the time he
was there, they had this rule. When I was there, there was no such
rule. The rule they have now is called the Hastert rule. Of course,
Hastert is in prison, so they should at least change the name of that
rule. The Hastert rule says: We are only going to pass a bill if we can
get a majority of the majority to vote for it. So to get anything done
in the House of Representatives, you have to have a majority of the
Republicans support a bill. It doesn't matter how the Democrats feel.
Basically, they do not get to vote on anything.
So what they did, in an effort to get something back here--the
Speaker has told lots of people: I can't pass anything dealing with
Zika unless we do something about Planned Parenthood. That is what he
has told everybody, and it is obvious from what they sent us. So this
$1.1 billion, no offsets, came back to us as a--I don't know what to
call it. They are not the same two vehicles. It restricts funding for
birth control provided by Planned Parenthood.
There is an obsession by the House Republicans--and I am sorry to say
the obsession over here is fairly well fixed also--and they want to do
everything they can to dramatically negatively affect Planned
Parenthood. That is what this is about.
If you are a woman in America today and you are worried about Zika, I
think you should be concerned about birth control. And women all over
America are. Some women can't go to a boutique physician and get a
prescription; they need to go to Planned Parenthood, where the health
care needs of millions of women are taken care of--but not under
Republican guidance, no.
So as part of this conference report, funding for Planned Parenthood
would be restricted--birth control.
Just to make sure they covered all their poison pill areas, they
said: We have to do something to whack the environment, so we will
change the Clean Water Act. That is what they did. That is what we got
back.
We hear all these great speeches about ``We want to do something to
take care of the veterans.'' Well, $500 million was taken out of
veterans to help pay for Zika funding--$500 million. What was that
veterans money to be used for? Processing claims. There is a tremendous
backlog. But that is in there.
Ebola funding. Two years ago, America was up in arms over Ebola. The
epidemic has died down, but it is not gone. There are still pockets of
real problems in Africa, and on any one day, they could burgeon into
something like they were 2 years ago. The National Institutes of Health
and the Centers for Disease Control want to keep some money there so
they can take care of this epidemic, but, no, they whacked $107 million
off of that.
Everyone knows the money they took from ObamaCare--I could raise a
point of order right now and it would fall. They can't do that. That is
wrong. They have had 67 votes in the House to defund ObamaCare. None of
them have passed, but they have had fun trying.
But in a final effort to kind of stick their finger in our eye, they
said: Here is what we are going to put on this great bill. We believe
it would be appropriate to fly the Confederate flag in military
cemeteries. You can't make up stuff like this. That is what they did.
We have repeatedly reached out to the Republicans to try to
compromise, to reach a solution to the threat of Zika. Of course, if we
work together, we have a chance to prevent babies from being born with
these terrible birth defects. The Presiding Officer is a physician. I
wasn't able to listen to all of his speech last evening, but I watched
part of it. He had a picture of a little baby, and he was explaining
about what Zika is all about.
We have reached out to Republicans to try to work something out. We
can work together. Even now, when we can see just over the horizon the
Republican convention starting on Monday, we can still do it before
then. We need to work something out. We want to do that. I have tried.
I know what is going on in the House. They can't pass anything on
their own unless they put this kind of stuff in it. All they would have
to do on the bill that passed the Senate with 89 votes--if the Speaker
would allow a vote in the House of Representatives, it would pass
overwhelmingly. Democrats, with rare exception, would vote for it. It
would get 98, 99 percent of the Democratic vote, and a few Republicans
would vote for it. It would pass overwhelmingly. That is what should
happen, but it can't.
I understand the Speaker is constrained by--he hasn't gone this far,
at least publicly. Boehner publicly said he had to deal with his
crazies. Speaker Ryan is dealing with the same crazies.
So I am going to ask unanimous consent to pass the same Zika
legislation that passed this body with 89 votes. As I said, if the
Speaker allowed a vote on this, it would pass.
Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 5243
So I ask whether the Senator from North Carolina would amend his
request to this: I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
consideration of H.R. 5243; that all after the enacting clause be
stricken; that the substitute amendment, which is the text of the
Blunt-Murray amendment to provide $1.1 billion in funding for Zika, be
agreed to; that there be up to 1 hour of debate, equally divided
between the two leaders or their designees; that upon the use or
yielding back of time, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and
the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with no intervening
action or debate.
Finally, Mr. President, I would ask that everyone be reminded that we
have had emergencies all over America. The Presiding Officer--I am
sorry to keep referring to him, but this is the subject at hand. When
his State had that terrible devastation with that terrible hurricane,
we were there. We were there the next day, the next week, the next
month, the next year, doing what we could to provide emergency funding
for the beleaguered State of Louisiana. We did it because it was the
right thing to do. It was an emergency. It was unpaid for. There were
no offsets. We have done that with an earthquake in California and with
a manmade fire in Texas. That is what we do. That is what emergencies
are all about.
So I ask that my consent request that I have outlined be approved.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from North Carolina so modify
his proposal?
Mr. TILLIS. No.
Mr. REID. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
I guess the shake of the head takes care of it.
[[Page S5049]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and I will
be very brief--sometimes when I hear these debates, they seem to be
far-ranging and they are getting off the main subject.
The motion that is before us would basically unwind a carefully
crafted compromise that could come crashing down if we don't move
forward with this deal. What the minority leader has suggested takes us
back to a process that takes days or weeks. We can't afford days or
weeks; we need to get this done now.
The motion we should be considering--that the Senator from Nevada
objected to--is the one that would get this to the President's desk.
The Senator's request adds time, complexity, and most likely is going
to suffer the same fate in the House, so for that reason, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the modification.
Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. REID. I have objected to his request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Utah.
Sentence Reform and Corrections Act
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to give a few remarks about how
I first became involved in the cause of sentencing reform within our
Federal criminal justice system.
I will never forget when I first began to appreciate the full
magnitude of this problem--the problem we face within a Federal
criminal justice system that is sometimes too inflexible and sometimes
doesn't allow judges to take into account the unique circumstances of
each case. It was 2004. I was a Federal prosecutor, an assistant U.S.
attorney in Utah. In some cases, I witnessed judges being forced by
Federal law to impose punishments that simply, under any standard, did
not fit the crime--first-time offenders sometimes being locked up for
periods of time longer than some rapists or murderers, terrorists or
kidnappers. These were real people--people with children, siblings,
parents, spouses, and, of course, dreams for a better life. Yet in too
many cases the so-called system that was supposed to correct their
mistakes arguably compounded them. This system wasn't just wasting
money, it wasn't just wasting physical material resources, it was
wasting lives.
I know some in my party may view this as a progressive cause. I view
it as a conservative one. Think about it. When there is a major problem
tearing at our economy and our civil society--a problem that is
threatening our most vulnerable families in our communities--
conservatives don't just shrug their shoulders and expect a bunch of
outdated laws and bloated government bureaucracies to take care of it.
We know better. Criminal justice reform doesn't call on conservatives
to abandon their principles, it calls on them to fight for them.
This process and the conservative cause are all about making our
communities--these little platoons, if you will, of service and
cooperation at the very heart of our constitutional republic--safe and
prosperous and happy. It is about basing our laws and basing our court
procedures and our prison systems on a clear-eyed understanding of
human nature--of how human beings respond, what brings out their better
selves and what doesn't, about man's predilection toward sin and his
capacity for redemption--along with an uncompromising commitment to
human dignity.
Respect for the dignity of all human life, the basic dignity of the
human soul, no matter how small or how weak, how rich or how poor, and
the redemptive capacity of all sinners, no matter how callous, are the
foundation for everything that conservatives purport to stand for. Our
approach to policing and of punishment should be no different.
Moreover, as a conservative, I believe we ought to watch out anytime
we give the government extraordinary powers, especially powers that
deprive the individual of liberty. And nowhere is the deprivation of
liberty more severe, more intense, more long-lasting than the
deprivation of liberty that occurs when a person is locked up for years
or for decades at a time, with no opportunity to progress, no
opportunity to interact with family members, no opportunity to interact
with the vibrant growing economy.
So when I got to the Senate and I was assigned to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, I started looking for partners--partners on both
sides of the aisle--who shared my concerns with the Federal criminal
justice system, shared my concerns with the way Federal minimum
mandatory sentences were working. I started looking for partners on
both sides of the aisle who shared this commitment to reform. Progress
in this area is difficult, and for a long time the progress we made in
this area was slow, just as any deliberative process often is.
I found an ally in my colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois. We
teamed up and put together legislation. That legislation gradually
started gaining some support. At first, it gained more support on the
other side of the aisle than it did on my side of the aisle, but we
were pleased with the progress that was made. But in the fall of last
year, we struck an agreement and we started making more progress. We
introduced a bill called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.
Like most legislative compromises, it isn't perfect and it doesn't
accomplish everything that every member of our coalition might wish we
could accomplish, but it is an extraordinarily great start, and it
proves it is possible to design our laws in a way that can balance the
sometimes competing interests of retribution and rehabilitation,
justice and mercy, the rights of victims and the rights of
perpetrators.
The Sentence Reform and Corrections Act will expand the now-limited
discretion of Federal judges so they can treat offenders like human
beings and not mere statistics and punish them according to their
particular circumstances. It would broaden the Federal safety valve, a
provision of existing law that allows judges to sentence a limited
number of offenders below the mandatory minimum. Contrary to what many
of this bill's critics claim, this would not absolve offenders of their
crimes, nor would it suddenly and indiscriminately release legions of
violent predators into our communities. In fact, under this reform, the
status of violent offenders would not change at all. They would remain
ineligible for Federal safety-valve relief.
Our criminal justice system simply has to be flexible--at least
flexible enough--to apply in many different situations. Prosecutors and
judges need to have the ability to impose lengthy sentences on serious
offenders who pose the greatest threat to public safety, just as they
must have the ability to impose modest sentences on those who violate
our laws but do not pose an ongoing threat to public safety. Whenever
we interfere with the flexibility of either of these, we impair the
effectiveness and the efficiency of our Federal criminal justice
system. When we do that, we necessarily make our country less safe,
rather than more safe.
So this bill would leave untouched the maximum penalty levels that
exist under current law. It also would not eliminate any mandatory
minimum sentences. Instead, it takes a targeted approach, reducing the
harshest mandatory penalties and providing relief for low-level
offenders with limited criminal history. It is this type of offender
that helped draw my attention to this issue back in 2004, just as I
described a few minutes ago.
One of the cases that was being handled by the office in which I
worked, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah,
involved a young man named Weldon Angelos, a young man in his
midtwenties, the father of two young children. He got involved in some
criminal activity and was caught selling three relatively small
quantities--dime-bag quantities--of marijuana to what turned out to be
an informant. Because Mr. Angelos had a gun on his person at the time
of these transactions, because of the way he was charged, and because
of the way some of these provisions of law have been interpreted--
including a provision of law in 18 USC, section 924(c)--Mr. Angelos
received a sentence of 55 years in prison.
Now, we may ask: What on Earth was this judge thinking? How could
such a judge be so cruel, so arbitrary, so capricious as to sentence
this young man to 55 years in prison for selling three dime-bag
quantities of marijuana? The
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judge didn't have a choice. In fact, it was the judge who first drew my
attention to the case because it was the judge who took the unusual--
the almost unprecedented, almost unheard of--step of issuing a written
opinion prior to the issuance of the sentence, disagreeing with the
sentence the judge himself was about to impose.
Then-Federal district judge Paul Cassell issued a lengthy opinion
stating: This is a problem. This young man is about to receive a
sentence that is excessive under any standard. It is a longer sentence
than he would have received had he engaged in many acts of terrorism or
kidnapping. So why are we sending this guy away until he is about 80
years old simply because of this minimum mandatory penalty? But, the
judge said: This is a problem I cannot address. This is a problem I am
powerless to remedy. Only Congress can fix this problem.
Those words have haunted me ever since then: Only Congress can fix
this problem. So when I became a Senator in 2011, I still remembered
those words. Those words continued to haunt me and continue to haunt me
to this day.
Miraculously, fortunately, Mr. Angelos has been released through a
variety of procedural maneuvers that I don't have time to address right
now. He himself has been released. Many others are still in prison,
under the same system, who have been locked up for years--decades--at a
time, much longer than any reasonable person would think would be a
just sentence. In fact, I have yet to meet a single person--Democrat,
Republican, old, young, male, female--who believes that the sentence
Mr. Angelos received was just. His story, his example is a good reason
why we need to pass this bill.
Finally, this bill improves the quality of our Federal prisons. If it
became law, it would increase access to vocational training,
therapeutic counseling, reentry services, and other programs, so that
we would have fewer first-time offenders turning into career criminals.
All of these are commonsense and, I believe, long-overdue reforms.
But make no mistake. We are at the beginning, not the end, of this
generation's story of criminal justice reform. As all of us know, the
road to reform is long and full of setbacks and obstacles. Today's
movement for criminal justice reform is no exception. But so long as
the people here today are involved in this effort, I am confident we
can together succeed where our prisons today often fail--in preparing
offenders to reintegrate into their communities as productive and law-
abiding citizens, as spouses, parents, neighbors, and employees,
instead of career criminals.
We can fix this problem. This bill would begin to address this
problem. But we need to bring this up. We need to have the opportunity
to debate this, to discuss this, to vote on it, and to pass it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Senator Booker from New Jersey is on the
floor. The three of us asked to come to the floor at 3, because the
rollcall was delayed.
I ask unanimous consent, if it is all right with the Senator from
Ohio, that Senator Booker be allowed to follow and to complete his
statement on the legislation we are supporting.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am going to be brief because I want to
defer and give my time to the Senator from New Jersey.
We are going through a moment in America's history that we are going
to remember for a long time. We are used to shooting deaths. Sadly, gun
violence has become part of America. Unfortunately, we are also used to
mass murders, where more than four people are killed in one of these
shooting incidents. But it rocked America's conscience and soul when
five policemen from Dallas were murdered. Those five policemen were
Officer Brent Thompson, age 43; Officer Patrick Zamarripa, age 32;
Officer Mike Krol, age 40; Senior Corporal Lorne Ahrens, age 48; and
Sergeant Michael Smith, age 55.
Yesterday, President Obama and former President Bush were there for
the memorial service to honor these men and to honor everyone in law
enforcement who gets up each morning, puts on a badge, and risks their
lives for us--for me, for my family, for my neighbors, for my
community, for my town, for my State, and for my Nation.
America was rocked by the senseless murder that took place in Dallas,
TX. But it isn't the only thing that has stunned the conscience of
America. At the same time, we have seen some shocking and disturbing
videos. In Baton Rouge, LA--the home State of the Presiding Officer--
Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old father, was shot and killed outside a
convenience store. In Falcon Heights, MN, Philando Castile, age 32, was
fatally shot in his car during a police traffic stop for a broken
taillight. His fiancee and her 4-year-old daughter were in the car.
Those three events came together--the killings of the police in
Dallas, and these video shootings--and shocked the conscience of
America in a way that I haven't seen before. It really called into
question some basics about our country and where we are going and what
we need to do.
President Obama said we must try to find common ground when he spoke
at this memorial service. He is right. I thought about that over the
weekend, and I called my colleague and friend from New Jersey and
talked to him about it. I said to him: When it comes to really showing
America, and particularly those who feel aggrieved by the current State
of justice, our bill on criminal justice reform speaks to a fundamental
issue as to whether or not minority populations--people of color--are
treated fairly in our system of justice.
Senator Lee just spoke. For those who may not know him, Senator Lee
is a conservative--a tea party conservative, I believe he would
probably say--Republican from the State of Utah. Senator Lee is joining
us--Durbin of Illinois, Booker of New Jersey, and Senator Grassley of
Iowa--in this effort. How many times do we run into that, where four
Senators with such diverse political beliefs come together on one
bill--this bill? As Senator Lee explained, what we are setting out to
do here is to right an injustice--an injustice that is filling the
Federal prisons, sentencing individuals to lengthy sentences for
nonviolent, nongun drug offenses.
This is long overdue, and it is something that we need to do. If we
did it, it would say yes to those across America who are asking: Is
Congress listening? Is the Senate awake to what is going on in our
country? It would say to them: Yes.
On a bipartisan basis, these four Senators, and many more, are
prepared to bring reform to our criminal justice correction and
sentencing system. Will it solve all of our problems? No, not at all,
but it is a significant step forward.
I was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives over 25 years ago
when a famous basketball star at the University of Maryland died from a
drug overdose. We were shocked by this. They came in and said it is
possible that he was a victim of crack cocaine. We had never heard the
term before. What is crack cocaine? A new form of cocaine crystals that
are cheap, highly addictive, and destructive. Len Bias was his name. We
were asked to put into law a sentencing provision that would be a
warning to everyone across America: Don't use crack cocaine.
We did. We imposed a new sentencing guideline for crack cocaine 100
times the penalty over powder cocaine--100 times. What it meant, sadly,
over a span of 25 years is that hundreds, if not thousands, of
individuals were convicted of possessing and selling crack cocaine and
sentenced for extraordinarily long sentences.
I ran into one of them in the city of Chicago. Let me tell a story.
It is brief, but it tells a story.
Alton Mills, age 24 in 1994, was a runner, a seller when it came to
street drugs. He was caught on his third offense of selling street
drugs. His third offense. He had never served a day in jail, not one.
His two previous offenses ended up in probation, and he didn't end up
with any correctional time. But this third one was the third strike. It
turned out that Alton Mills at age 24, for his third sale of crack
cocaine, was sentenced to life in prison--life in prison.
He languished there. Thank goodness, his mom and dad never gave up on
him. He found a public defender, whose name, ironically, was MiAngel
Cody. She went to work and fought for
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him and took her message to every office, including mine, and I took
her message to the White House. Alton Mills' sentence was commuted. He
came out of prison after 22 years behind bars. That is one example--22
years.
What we are trying to do is come up with a sentencing system that is
sensible, that punishes those who are guilty for sure, but does it in a
smart and thoughtful way--reforming and saying to populations across
America, yes, we can be a more just society.
This criminal justice reform idea is one that is not only bipartisan,
but it passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in October of last
year--October--by a vote of 15 to 5. It was a bipartisan rollcall vote
that came out of committee. Why haven't we taken up this bill? Why
don't we take this up as soon as we return in September? Why don't we
say to people across America that we are going to do something positive
in terms of restoring justice in this country to everyone across the
board in this bipartisan bill?
That is why we come to the floor today, and that is what we are
asking for. It will save money for taxpayers in addition to bringing
justice to the system. I believe the money we save can be brought back
to our law enforcement agencies for training and equipment. So let's
show our faith in their efforts to keep America safe, and let's show
our commitment to justice in this reform.
I am fortunate because I was joined in this struggle by a brand-new
Senator from New Jersey then named Cory Booker. He has been an
extraordinary voice in this effort.
Senator Lee and I were doing pretty well until Cory Booker came
along, and he has added more firepower and more horsepower to this
effort than any other Senator could, certainly any new Senator. I
commend him for helping us in this effort and being committed to it in
his heart.
At this time I would like to yield the floor to my junior colleague
from the State of New Jersey, Senator Booker.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to thank Mike Lee for coming to the
floor and speaking with such heart and conviction. Also, I want to
thank Senator Durbin for his stand on the floor today.
Please understand, Senator Lee, Senator Grassley, Senator Durbin,
Senator Leahy, and so many Senators on both sides of the aisle have
been speaking on this issue for years. In fact, since before I became a
U.S. Senator, this moment has come. As Senator Durbin began talking
about the issues of the day, where there is so much frustration, so
much concern, so much consternation, so much divisiveness on this issue
of criminal justice in America, it made me think personally about this
idea of hope because this week I have talked to a lot of people who
seem to be indulging in a dangerous, toxic state of being, which is
hopelessness about criminal justice issues in our country.
I have appreciated Senator Durbin, who has not just been a senior
Senator, not just been steadfast in working on this issue, but he has
been a friend, calling me up, not just this past week but weeks before,
when lots of Americans were indulging in hopelessness about the
divisiveness in our country, about the injustices in our country, about
the ravages of a broken criminal justice system.
As I have been thinking about hopelessness, I keep coming back to
this understanding, taught to me by teachers on the streets of Newark,
NJ, that hope does not exist in an abstract; that hope is the active
conviction that no matter how bad things get, despair will not have the
last word; that hope is a choice that must be made amidst hopelessness;
that amidst despair, amidst frustration, you have to choose hope; and
that choosing hope means you commit yourself to a process that doesn't
divide this country but that unifies it with the conviction that we can
be a nation that makes real the words we pledge when we say we are a
nation, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all.
This week we need those words. We need that hope. Mike Lee and Dick
Durbin, two politicians on opposite sides of the spectrum, said: Hey,
this is a time that we should be pushing hope, indivisibility, and we
have a bill that addresses issues at the core of so much of the
frustration going on. It doesn't solve all the issues, it doesn't wave
a wand, but it will advance us toward liberty and justice for all
because, unequivocally, we have gone off the rails.
Since 1980, the land of the free broke with the rest of the world and
became the incarceration nation. Our prison population has exploded
since 1980. The Federal prison population is up 800 percent. Our
overall prison population is up 500 percent. We have only about 5
percent of the globe's population, but one out of every four
incarcerated people on the planet Earth are right here in America.
In response to a criminal justice system that has lost its
proportionality in its punishment and that seems to have become more
about retribution than restorative justice, a criminal justice system
that is rife with the stories that Mike Lee talked about when he talked
about Weldon Angelos and a judge who himself cried out about the
injustice of sentencing someone to 55 years for a nonviolent drug crime
or Alton Mills, whom Senator Durbin spoke about, who was sentenced to
life in prison for a nonviolent drug crime, we in America went off the
rails.
I am hopeful today because on the right and the left, not just
Members of this body but from the Koch brothers to Newt Gingrich, to
Grover Norquist, to the ACLU, people on both sides of the political
spectrum said we can do better because this broken criminal justice
system is hurting us. Rather than being a tool for public safety and
social order, as was intended by our criminal justice system, it
instead became an industry and an end to itself. It became a massive
exploding bureaucracy, draining our economic prosperity.
In fact, one study has shown we would have 20 percent less poverty in
America if our incarceration rates were similar to our industrial
peers. This has been a divisive drain on our cohesive society, a
misappropriation of taxpayer funds.
While our infrastructure has been crumbling, we have led the planet
Earth in building out a prison infrastructure. In fact, between the
time I was in law school in the mid-1990s to the time I became mayor of
Newark, we were building a new prison in this country every 10 days.
Congress has increased Federal spending on prisons alone by 45
percent since about the year 2000. Congress has cut spending on the
things that keep us safe, such as law enforcement at the State level,
by 76 percent--putting someone like Weldon Angelos in prison for 55
years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in a long, disproportionate
sentence for a nonviolent crime that could have gone to public safety,
like hiring police officers for our community. What is painful to me in
this time is that our criminal justice system--the data that I gave
would be painful enough, but our criminal justice system clearly
disproportionately affects poor people, leading authors like Bryan
Stevenson to say that we have a criminal justice system that seems to
treat you better if you are rich and guilty than poor and innocent.
Blacks and Whites have no difference in America in using or selling
drugs, but African Americans are about 3.6 times more likely to get
arrested for selling drugs. Instead of a criminal justice system that
unites us under principles of justice and fairness, we see it
disproportionately persecuting groups because they are poor or because
they are of color.
If you look at Latinos, they account for the largest group of
offenders convicted of offenses that have a mandatory minimum at 38
percent. Native Americans are grossly overrepresented in the criminal
justice system with an incarceration rate 38 percent higher than the
national average.
Eighty percent of Americans in our criminal justice system are
represented by public defenders, meaning that they are deemed by the
court to be indigent, to be too poor to afford an attorney.
Our justice system does not reflect our values. This drug war is not
being carried out in a way that is fair or just, and it is not just
hurting the poor, the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the minorities.
It hurts all Americans because it drains our resources; it drains our
treasure. When I say ``treasure,'' I
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don't just mean money. We have come to a point in America today where
millions of children have had parents who are incarcerated, and it
hurts generationally the best of our Nation, the promise of our Nation.
The irony about our lack of action in putting this bill to a vote is
that States are already moving more quickly than we are. Red States,
Georgia and Mississippi and Texas, have been doing things for years
that we have been proposing in this bill, and have yet to enact, that
have shrunk their prison populations. Guess what has happened in States
such as Texas and Georgia and Mississippi, which have lowered their
prison populations. Guess what happened. Their crime went down, as
well, because when you have a system that is not about retribution but
about restorative justice, that has proportionality in sentences, you
not only save money for your State, but you also empower people to
succeed and lower crime.
When States start to put drug addicts in treatment as opposed to
jail, it empowers people to succeed, saves money, and lowers the prison
population. It is common sense. Red states have acted. We have seen the
success. But in the Federal prison population, there is an 800 percent
increase. It takes away money that should be spent on homeland
security, money that should be spent on investing in public safety,
money that should be spent for our public universities, money that
should be saved for the taxpayers but is now going, still fueling one
of the biggest growing bureaucracies we have seen in the last 40 years.
This calls for unity in our country. I tell you, we have unity. When
I can stand in partnership with Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley, when you
have people like Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin--these folks are not
normally mentioned together as partners on legislation, but I am proud
that some of the most esteemed Members, the chairman of the Judiciary
Committee and the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, both agree
that we can put more justice in our justice system. We can do something
to reverse this trend, and we can begin to put rationality back so that
the values of this country are made more real.
I am proud to have negotiated and worked with Chairman Grassley, who
is sitting across the aisle from me right now. I am honored. In the 3
years I have been in the Senate, one of the more proud things that I
have accomplished is to find common ground with my Republican
colleagues on the other side in a bill that I know--from the
neighborhood and block that I live on to across the country--would make
a difference.
Now we have encountered some sclerosis, some blockage. A dam exists
between where we stand now and greater justice for our Nation. This has
been a tough week. It has been a week of frustration and grief and
sadness. This is a time that we should choose hope. It is a time that
we should choose unity. It is a time that this very body should be
saying to America: Hey, we have challenges, but we can find common
ground. We can come together, left and right, Black and White. We can
do better than we are doing now. It is a hard walk that we have ahead,
but this body can start leading on issues of justice.
There have been other difficult times in our country when this body
answered the call. There have been times where people were fearful,
people doubted, and there have been times where people felt their heart
was heavy. I am proud that, in our history, it was in those times that
leaders emerged and chose hope.
My prayer is that in the waning days of this Congress, with all the
important things we have on our agenda, we remember that there are
people right now who are stuck in despair. There are people who don't
believe in our indivisibility, as we say in our Pledge of Allegiance.
There are people who are frustrated. It is my hope, when it comes to
issues of criminal justice, a system that is so obviously broken, that
we choose reform; that we choose healing; that we demonstrate unity;
that on this issue we bring forward a bipartisan bill that begins to
cast away some of the darkness that hangs over our country with the
light and wisdom that is in this bill that reflects both sides of the
political aisle and, I believe, that reflects the best of who we are as
a body.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise because I continue to believe
that the Senate should take up the Sentencing Reform and Corrections
Act. There is still time this year for both the Senate and the other
body to pass legislation reforming sentencing. In light of recent and
justified public concern over treatment of suspects by some police and
treatment of police by people who would do them harm, the need for the
bill is even greater.
The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act contains three parts, each
of which was formed as the basis of a bipartisan compromise among
Judiciary Committee members, as well as members off the Committee.
The first is a reduction in the mandatory minimum sentences for
nonviolent drug offenders. The bill takes great pains to limit
sentencing reductions to people with minimal criminal histories and no
history of serious violence. Second, the bill enhances prison
programming that has been proven to reduce the likelihood of
reoffending, and reduces the sentences of inmates who successfully
completed those programs. Reducing the likelihood of future crimes
reduces the crime rate. And third, the bill makes various reforms to
the federal criminal justice system. For instance, it allows people
convicted of certain crimes as juveniles to expunge their criminal
records if they turn their lives around. And it remedies a
constitutional defect in Federal criminal law by permitting individuals
sentenced to life sentences as juveniles to seek parole after many
years, but doesn't guarantee that parole will be granted. It even adds
two new mandatory minimum sentences to the Federal criminal code for
serious crimes.
The confidence of people in the criminal justice system is not as
strong as we would like. There are various reasons for this lack of
trust, and some of them are valid.
The Judiciary Committee reported a compromise bill that is designed
to address some of those concerns. The sponsors' willingness to
compromise was further demonstrated by a managers' amendment that
narrowed the bill's sentencing reductions.
Those changes responded to concerns of some of my Republican
colleagues and brought on board a number of new Republican cosponsors.
I have been willing for a long time to enter into an agreement where
members can offer amendments of various kinds and we can vote. For
instance, the House has determined that a provision of substantive
criminal law addressing intent should be part of any bill. I have been
open to any compromise on that issue that could gain 60 votes. And I
would agree to have a vote on the subject if a compromise cannot be
reached. The differences can be aired and resolved.
I am certain that this bill would receive many more than 60 votes and
that most of the Republican conference would vote for it if given the
chance.
No one thinks the sentencing bill is perfect, as it represents a
compromise among people with strong differences of opinion. But the
people of this country want action to address deficiencies in the
criminal justice system.
This bill would make important but limited changes in the way the
Federal Government sentences those who commit crimes.
We should take the bill up, debate it, and show the American people
that we are willing to take on one of the most important domestic
challenges facing the country.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act. We had a good vote earlier today on
proceeding to that legislation, and it is my expectation and hope that
we will vote on this legislation either today or tomorrow morning.
Let me say first say, this legislation called CARA, the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act, also includes some criminal justice reform.
It is one step closer to this broader bill that Senator Grassley and
Senator Booker just talked about. I am a cosponsor of their bill
because I do think we need sentencing reform, but CARA actually
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has some reforms called diversion programs. Instead of putting people
who are in the criminal justice system and addicted to drugs in prison,
they are put into a treatment program, and those treatment programs
have proven to be successful. We have drug court funding and specific
new programs for our veterans. The notion is, this is part of criminal
justice reform, to actually take people who are suffering from drug
addiction in the criminal justice system and move them into treatment,
which makes so much more sense for them, their families, taxpayers,
their communities. That is part of this underlying legislation that we
will vote on later today in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery
Act.
I also support broader legislation. I am hoping the broader
legislation will have more to do with the prisoner reentry programs as
well--the so-called second chance. I am the author of the Second Chance
Act from my House days, and I hope that legislation can be reauthorized
as part of this larger criminal justice reform issue.
Today I will focus on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act
because this legislation is badly needed. It is an emergency in our
communities right now. This is the heroin and prescription drug issue
that unfortunately many more people are learning about because it is
affecting many more of us.
I had a tele-townhall meeting last night, which I do monthly. We had
25,000 Ohioans on the call. We typically have a few polls where we ask
about the top issues. Last night, we asked how many people on the call
were directly affected by the heroin and prescription drug issue. We
asked people to indicate that by hitting ``1'' for a yes and ``2'' for
a no. Sixty-eight percent of the people on this call said: Yes, they
were directly affected. We had a lot of calls from people who were
affected. We had a call from a woman whose stepson was addicted and he
was trying to get treatment but couldn't find a place, and they wanted
me to help them find a proper place to get treatment and recovery
services. Others called in about the legislation and asked why we
haven't passed it yet. My answer to them was, it is coming and help is
on the way.
I am frustrated, just as they are, that we haven't moved more quickly
on this, but, again, we finally had a vote today to move this
legislation forward. I hope the final passage vote will occur later
today or tomorrow morning, and we will be able to get this to the
President's desk for his signature.
It initially passed the Senate with a 94-to-1 vote back on March 10.
It then went over to the House of Representatives, where the House
worked through their own process. They had 18 separate bills rather
than 1 comprehensive bill, and then in the period between then and now,
we have had this conference between the House and Senate to work out
the differences. That conference report was voted on in the House last
Friday, and it was an overwhelming vote. Why? Because this makes so
much sense. Again, on the Senate floor today we had a very strong vote
result of 90 to 2 on the cloture motion to move this legislation
forward, and I am hopeful we will have a strong vote tomorrow morning
so we can send this to the President and get it to our communities and
begin to get those who need it some help.
The legislation is considered by some to be inadequate because it
doesn't have enough funding in it. Well, it is not a funding bill. It
is not an appropriations bill. It is a bill that establishes new
programs to fund new and better ways to deal with addiction. It
authorizes significant new spending. Since the Senate passed the bill
with a 94-to-1 vote, only two things have happened with regard to
funding. One is that we more than doubled the authorization so there is
more funding authorized--$181 million per year. Second, we also had the
Appropriations Committee go through its process and both the Senate and
House Appropriations Committee voted to actively increase funding in
this area, and that is a good thing.
I think it is an emergency, I think it is urgent, and I think we
should spend more money here because it will save money over the long
haul and because there are so many people who are not achieving their
God-given purpose because this addiction has taken them off track. We
have to help them and help them now. We have to help keep people from
getting into that funnel of addiction by focusing more on prevention
and education, but all that has happened since the 94-to-1 vote in the
Senate is that there has been a 93-percent increase over last year's
funding which will go into effect next year, and by the way that is a
539-percent increase over the funding just 2 years ago.
The House appropriations bill has a bigger increase in the funding. I
will fight for that funding, and I will fight to ensure that that
funding actually applies to the programs that are in the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act because it is the kind of legislation that
will actually make a difference helping to ensure that we can begin to
turn the tide on this issue.
The legislation before us is one that 94 Senators have already voted
for, and, again, it passed the House with big numbers so I am hopeful
there will not be any roadblocks in the way of getting it done.
Today I was asked by some people: What does the bill really do? I
started to go through all of the specific grant programs for our
veterans, mothers who are pregnant, kids who are born dependent on
drugs, and those folks who find themselves unable to get treatment.
There are specific provisions for our law enforcement personnel, which
is why the Fraternal Order of Police has been a strong supporter. I
appreciate them for standing up early as a law enforcement entity.
Others have backed this legislation as well because it provides more
training on how to use this miracle drug called Narcan, or naloxone,
which will help save people who have overdosed. There are a lot of
specific programs here, but I think the answer to the question as to
what it does is pretty simple. For the first time ever in this United
States Congress, it begins to treat addiction like the disease it is,
and this means, by necessity, if it is a disease, we need to get people
into treatment. It begins to change the way we approach addiction by
saying: Let's remove the stigma so people will come forward and
families are willing to talk about it.
Last night on that call, when 68 percent of the respondents to the
poll said they were directly affected by this issue, I bet many of
those people had not thought about talking about that issue publicly. I
think this legislation helps to establish the fact that this is a
disease.
This legislation will also help deal with an underlying problem,
which is how we will deal with prescription drugs in our communities.
Too often in our society there has been an overprescribing of
painkillers that are addictive.
I heard another story today, and I hear them every day when I am back
home. This was somebody whose family member had gone to the hospital
for a knee operation, and when he was done with the procedure, the
doctor gave him 80 Percocets. He didn't take any of them because he
didn't need them, but his point was: Why 80 pills? Four out of five of
the heroin addicts in Ohio and around this country started with
prescription drugs, and often it was very inadvertent. It was something
where someone had a wisdom tooth taken out and was given a number of
these prescription pain pills but didn't understand the risks. When
that person started taking them, there was a physiological change in
that person's brain. That person became addicted and that person went
to heroin and that person then died of an overdose. That has happened
to two families in my home State. Those parents have now come forward
not to just tell that story and share their grief but to channel that
grief into something positive, which is to let other parents know. That
is in this legislation. We have a national awareness program to let
people know about the fact that the prescription drug link to heroin,
opioids, and addiction is real, and we must be very careful.
For the first time ever in Federal law, it also promotes recovery.
Treatment is one thing, but as one of my friends back home who is in
recovery told me, getting clean is easier, but staying clean is hard.
In other words, so often what we found as we did our research around
the country is that people go through a treatment program, but the
recovery services aren't
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there to take them through that longer term support to enable them to
stay clean. Tragically, we save a life only to see someone overdose
again later. Recovery is about finishing the job and helping people get
their lives back, and it is an incredibly important part of this
legislation.
Earlier this week, I spoke to Faces & Voices of Recovery. They have
been terrific in promoting this legislation, and just as important,
letting people who are in recovery know that you have friends, that
this can be addressed, and that you can come out on the other side as a
person who is achieving their purpose in life and God-given abilities.
You can get through this.
I was honored to speak at their rally here in Washington, DC. This
was about a year ago, and they brought in people from all over the
country. They had some great entertainers and people who were willing
to stand up for the first time and say: I am in recovery. If you are in
recovery, too, we want to embrace and help you.
One of the advocates whom I met with the other night is a woman named
Sarah Nerad. Sarah is someone I have gotten to know over the years. A
couple of years ago, we had a roundtable discussion as this legislation
was being drafted, and Sarah told me her story. She was a recovering
addict who went to Ohio State University. She found there were no
support services at the university. She started a student recovery
support community. That community at Ohio State University not only has
a lot of people now joining and participating in it--recovering
addicts, family members, and friends--but she is also now spreading
this at colleges and universities around the country.
There are grants in this legislation to promote these support
communities because they work, and I hold up Sarah as an example of
someone who was brave and courageous enough to talk about her addiction
and therefore was able to get other people attracted to her and her
support group. As a result, she was able to go on and help so many
other people and change so many other lives, and really, in her case,
to be able to say that she is a major part of this legislation, because
we included this partly because of her testimony and her stories.
Until we end this stigma, we are not going to make the progress that
we must. The Drug Enforcement Agency tells us that this is not getting
better, this is getting worse. They tell us that from 2010 until the
most recent data we have, which is 2014, there has been a tripling of
heroin overdoses.
In my own State of Ohio, we have seen a dramatic increase. Since
March 10, when 94 Senators voted for CARA, we have lost more than
14,000 Americans. Think about that. Since March 10, more than 14,000
Americans have succumbed. In other words, they have overdosed and died
from heroin and prescription drugs, opioid overdoses. Unfortunately,
this is just the tip of the iceberg.
As horrible as those numbers are--the 14,000 overdose deaths--think
of all the casualties. Think of the 16,000 people in Ohio who have been
saved from overdoses by Narcan. But many of them have not gotten into
treatment, have not gone into recovery, and they continue to be broken
apart from their families. The drugs are everything--not their kids,
not their parents. They continue to be unable or unwilling to work.
They continue to commit crimes. In most communities in my home State of
Ohio, law enforcement will tell us that the No. 1 cause of crime is
this issue. They continue to be unable to pursue their God-given
abilities. Those are the casualties of this.
No one suffers alone. In Ohio, we are told that 200,000 people are
now struggling with addiction. That is the size of a major city in
Ohio. Many of those addicted are parents. We are told that 30 percent--
think about this--30 percent of all kids in Ohio who are in the custody
of the State are there because their parents are opioid users. Among
infants, that number is 70 percent. Seventy percent of the infants who
are in the custody of the State of Ohio are there because their parents
are opioid users. I call that an epidemic.
It is driving up crime, as I said. In Marion, OH, Police Chief Bill
Collins put it this way: ``All of the property crimes we have--the
shoplifting, the theft, the robberies--all go back to one thing, and
that's heroin.'' That is a quote from him. He says that this epidemic
makes him and other law enforcement officials feel like they are ``in
the ocean without a life jacket.'' That is what we are trying to do
with CARA, is to provide that life jacket.
It is not just the silver bullet. It won't solve all the problems.
Washington is not going to solve this problem--it is going to be solved
in our communities and in our hearts--but this will help. It will help
make the Federal Government a much better partner with State and local
government, with the wonderful nonprofits that are doing the good work,
and with the families and the communities.
Last week, in just one 36-hour period in Akron, OH, 20 people
overdosed on opioids, 3 of them fatally. That is not even 2 days in one
city. When the first responders arrived at one of the overdoses, by the
way, there were two small children present.
In Central Ohio, in Columbus, nine people overdosed, two of them
fatally, on Sunday. That is in one city in 1 day. Two of those occurred
at McDonald's, by the way, with families around. It was in broad
daylight.
A few months ago, we lost seven-time Grammy Award winner Prince to a
fentanyl overdose. We all know about Prince. You might not know that
this week, 10-time Grammy Award-winning singer Chaka Khan checked into
a rehabilitation center for fentanyl addiction. I want to commend her
for having the courage to admit she needed help and for taking the
steps--very publicly--necessary to get her life back on track. This
will help others to do the same thing. God bless you for doing it. I
think this is, sadly, an instructive case because, much like Prince,
she has fame, she has fortune, 10 No. 1 hit songs, and all of the
talent you could ever ask for. Most people would say those aren't the
kinds of people who get addicted. Addiction knows no ZIP Code.
Addiction spares no one. It affects people of every single background.
If you talk to people in Ohio, they get it. Ohioans understand the
scope of this epidemic now, and they are taking action. They expect us
to help and to take action too. That is what this legislation is about.
They couldn't believe how slow we have moved on this. They couldn't
believe these ideas that we might try to delay this further for reasons
that had nothing to do with the substance.
The Talawanda School District outside of my hometown of Cincinnati,
OH, announced last week that they are now adding to their health and
wellness curriculum key information about opiates. I talked to a couple
of superintendents today who are doing the same thing in their schools.
I believe this is critical to preventing overdoses from beginning in
the first place, by using better prevention and identification, keeping
people from getting into that funnel of addiction, and that is what is
happening. CARA supports this.
In Trumbull County, OH, more than 200 Ohioans participated in a Walk
Against Heroin over the Fourth of July weekend. Again, people are
starting to take action.
I know it can be very discouraging. The scope of this problem is
overwhelming, but there is hope. Treatment can work. Recovery does
work. If we can get this legislation to the President, I am confident
he will sign it into law, and in many more of our communities we will
have better treatment and better recovery and more hope for the people
we represent.
I thank Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for his work with me on this
issue. He has been the coauthor of this. We started more than 3 years
ago, going to conferences here in Washington, DC. We had five
conferences. We brought in experts from all over the country--people
whom I have talked about earlier included--from Ohio but every State.
We talked about how to actually make a difference in communities around
the country. We didn't care where the idea came from--Republican,
Democrat, Independent. That didn't matter. What mattered was whether
the idea made sense. Senator Whitehouse and his staff have done a
terrific job in keeping this bill moving and making sure we didn't get
off track.
I also thank other colleagues who have been helpful, especially
Senator
[[Page S5055]]
Kelly Ayotte and Senator Amy Klobuchar for their passion and for their
help in crafting this legislation.
The American people are tired of the partisanship. We all hear that.
We all know that. It is time for us to act.
I also thank some of the staff who have been so helpful on this
legislation and who have put their heart and soul into this effort,
including Megan Harrington, Pam Thiessen, Mark Isakowitz, Teri Geiger,
Brian Riedl, Allen Ernst, and Sarah Schmidt on my staff. I am proud of
their work throughout this process.
I thank all the advocates we have worked with all across Ohio and all
across the country. They have been here in Washington. They helped us
to get the great vote in the House last week, and they are working
today on the vote tonight or tomorrow. I want to point out in
particular that Jessica Nickel has helped to keep us all moving in the
same direction. The outside advocates have been terrific.
Last, I thank those who have shared their stories, and most
importantly, I thank them for their willingness to allow us to hear
from them. These are people who are in recovery. These are people who
are in the trenches, dealing every day with this issue, who are
providing the love and the attention and the support to help people get
their treatment and into recovery. These are our first responders who
are out there on the frontlines dealing with this issue every single
day. These are our doctors and nurses who find our waiting rooms and
our emergency rooms are filled with people who have addiction problems
and overdoses. These are the people who work in the neonatal units with
these babies who are born dependent, a 750-percent increase in my home
State just in the last 12 years, and they take these babies through a
recovery and treatment program so that they can be healthy and get back
on track. I thank all of them.
I want to finish with a story. About a year ago I visited a treatment
center in Ohio. I have been to more than a dozen treatment centers in
my home State to talk about this issue and to get ideas. It was the
Zeph Center, which is a center in Toledo, OH. I had asked if we could
have a discussion, a roundtable discussion, and sure enough, we did. At
this roundtable discussion, some people came forward who are in
recovery. There were about a dozen people there. Again, I congratulate
them for coming forward and for being willing to talk to me and to be
public. There were people there from the community who heard their
stories for the first time, and they did share their stories, but also
they came ready to talk. They had reviewed the draft legislation. They
had it in front of them. They had ideas. They had input. They had
looked at every single section of the bill. They knew what programs
were funded. They talked about what they thought worked and what didn't
work in their lives. It was an example of the process we went through
with this legislation. It wasn't just a bunch of people in Washington
saying we know what is best; it was people back home saying: We need
this help, and we want to be sure you do it right. And by the way, keep
it nonpartisan. Make sure we get this done. Don't let anything get in
the way.
That is what we have done. That is what we will do tonight or
tomorrow morning when we vote on this bill. That is why it is so
important that we get it passed, because it is those recovering addicts
at the Zeph Center and others around the State of Ohio who have
patiently waited for this legislation. It is now our duty to deliver
that legislation and help turn the tide in this epidemic.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Our American Family
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, I rise today to give my second speech this
week discussing the issues we are facing as a nation following last
week's tragedies in Dallas, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge. This speech is
perhaps the most difficult because it is the most personal.
On Monday, I talked about how the vast majority of our law
enforcement officers have only two things in mind: protect and serve.
But, as I noted then, we do have serious issues that must be resolved.
In many cities and towns across the Nation, there is a deep divide
between the Black community and law enforcement. There is a trust gap,
a tension that has been growing for decades. And as a family, one
American family, we cannot ignore these issues because while so many
officers do good--and as I said on Monday, we should be very thankful
and supportive of all of those officers who do good--some simply do
not. I have experienced it myself.
So today I want to speak about some of those issues--not with anger,
although I have been angry. I tell my story not out of frustration,
although at times I have been frustrated. I stand here before you today
because I am seeking for all of us, the entire American family, to work
together so we all experience the lyrics of a song that we can hear but
not see: peace, love, and understanding. Because I shuddered when I
heard Eric Garner say, ``I can't breathe.'' I wept when I watched
Walter Scott turn and run away and get shot in the back and killed. And
I broke when I heard the 4-year-old daughter of Philando Castile's
girlfriend tell her mother, ``It's OK, I'm right here with you.'' These
are people. Lost forever. Fathers, brothers, sons.
Some will say and maybe even scream: But they have criminal records.
They were criminals. They had spent time in jail.
And while having a record should not sentence you to death, I say,
OK, then, I will share with you some of my own experiences or the
experiences of good friends and other professionals.
I can certainly remember the very first time I was pulled over by a
police officer as just a youngster. I was driving a car that had an
improper headlight. It didn't work right. And the cop came up to my
car, hand on his gun, and said: Boy, don't you know your headlights are
not working properly? I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and scared--very
scared.
But instead of sharing experience after experience, I want to go to a
time in my life as an elected official to share just a couple of
stories as an elected official. But please remember that in the course
of 1 year, I have been stopped seven times by law enforcement
officers--not four, not five, not six, but seven times in 1 year as an
elected official. Was I speeding sometimes? Sure. But the vast majority
of the time I was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car
in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial.
One of the times I remember I was leaving the mall. I took a left out
of the mall, and as soon as I took a left, a police officer pulled in
right behind me. That was my first time. I got to another traffic
light, and I took another left into a neighborhood. The police followed
behind me. I took a third left onto the street that at the time led to
my apartment complex and then finally I took a fourth left coming into
my apartment complex, and then the blue lights went on. The officer
approached the car and said that I did not use my turn signal on the
fourth turn. Keep in mind, as my colleagues might imagine, I was paying
very close attention to the law enforcement officer who followed me on
four turns. Do you really think that somehow I forgot to use my turn
signal on the fourth turn? Well, according to him, I did.
Another time, I was following a friend of mine. We had just left
working out and we were heading out to grab a bite to eat at about 4
o'clock in the afternoon. He pulls out, and I pull out right behind
him. We are driving down the road, and the blue lights come on. The
officer pulls me into the median, and he starts telling me that he
thinks perhaps the car is stolen. Well, I started asking myself--
because I was smart enough not to ask him but was asking myself--is the
license plate coming in as stolen? Does the license plate match the
car? I was looking for some rational reason that may have prompted him
to stop me on the side of the road.
I also think about the experiences of my brother, who became a
command sergeant major in the U.S. Army, the highest rank for an
enlisted soldier. He was driving from Texas to Charleston and was
pulled over by a law enforcement officer who wanted to know if he had
stolen the car he was driving because it was a Volvo.
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I do not know many African-American men who do not have a very
similar story to tell, no matter the profession, no matter their
income, no matter their position in life.
I also recall the story of one of my former staffers--a great guy,
about 30 years old--who drove a Chrysler 300, which is a nice car,
without question, but not a Ferrari, not a super nice car. He was
pulled over so many times here in DC for absolutely no reason other
than that he was driving a nice car. He sold that car and bought a more
obscure form of transportation. He was tired of being targeted. Imagine
the frustration, the irritation, the sense of a loss of dignity that
accompanies each of those stops.
Even here on Capitol Hill, where I have had the great privilege of
serving the people of South Carolina as a U.S. Congress Member and as a
U.S. Senator for the last 6 years--for those who don't know, there are
a few ways to identify a Member of Congress or Senate. Well, typically,
when you have been here for a couple of years, the law enforcement
officers get to know your face and they identify you by face, but if
that doesn't happen, then you have an ID badge, a license you can show
them, or this really cool pin. I oftentimes said the House pin was
larger because our egos are bigger. So we have a smaller pin in the
Senate. It is easy to identify a U.S. Senator by our pin.
I recall walking into an office building just last year after being
here for 5 years in the capital, and the officer looked at me, full of
attitude, and said, ``The pin I know, and you I don't. Show me your
ID.'' I will tell you, I was thinking to myself, either he thinks I am
committing a crime, impersonating a Member of Congress, or--or what?
Well, I will tell you that later that evening I received a phone call
from his supervisor apologizing for the behavior. That is at least the
third phone call I have received from a supervisor or the Chief of
Police since I have been in the Senate.
So while I thank God I have not endured bodily harm, I have felt the
pressure applied by the scales of justice when they are slanted. I have
felt the anger, the frustration, the sadness, and the humiliation that
comes with feeling like you are being targeted for nothing more than
being just yourself.
As the former staffer I mentioned earlier told me yesterday, there is
absolutely nothing more frustrating, more damaging to your soul than
when you know you are following the rules and you are being treated
like you are not.
But make no mistake--no matter this turmoil, these issues should not
lead anyone to any conclusion other than to abide by the laws. I think
the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., said it so well. Returning
violence with violence only leads to more violence and to even darker
nights, nights, to paraphrase, without stars. There is never ever an
acceptable reason to harm a member of our law enforcement community--
ever. I don't want anybody to misinterpret the words I am saying.
Even in the times of great darkness, there is light. As I shared
Monday, there are hundreds--thousands of stories of officers who go
beyond the call of duty. Ms. Taylor--whom I spoke about on Monday
night--at the Dallas incident was covered completely by at least three
officers who were willing to lose their lives to save hers. We have a
real opportunity to be grateful and thankful for our men and women in
uniform.
I shared another story on Monday night as well, and while the one I
want to tell you today does not involve a tragic loss of life, it does
show support that meant a lot to me at the time it occurred. Prior to
serving in the U.S. Senate, I was an elected official on the county
level, State level, and a Member of the U.S. Congress. I believe it is
my responsibility to hang out and be with my constituents as often as
possible and to hear their concerns. At some point during my time as a
public servant, I traveled to an event I was invited to along with two
staffers and two law enforcement officers--all four were White, and me.
When we arrived at the event, the organizer seemed to have a particular
issue with me coming to the event. They allowed my two staffers to go
into the event and seemed fine with allowing the two officers to go
into the event, who both said they weren't going in unless I was going
in. So in order to avoid a tense situation, I opted to leave because
there is no winning that kind of debate ever. But I was so proud and
thankful for those two law enforcement officers who were enraged by
this treatment. It was such a moment that I will never forget and a
situation that I would love to forget.
This situation happens all across the country. This situation happens
all across the country whether or not we want to recognize it. It may
not happen a thousand times a day, but it happens too many times a day,
and to see it as I have had the chance to see it helps me understand
why this issue has wounds that have not healed in a generation. It
helps me to appreciate and to understand and helps me communicate why
it is time for this American family to have a serious conversation
about where we are, where we are going, and how to get there. We must
find a way to fill these cracks in the very foundation of our country.
Tomorrow I will return with my final speech in this three-part series
on solutions and how to get to where we need to go by talking about the
policies that get us there and the people solutions because I, like
you, Mr. President, don't believe that all answers are in government. I
don't believe all the solutions we need start in government, but we
need people doing things that only individuals can do.
Today, however, I simply ask you this: Recognize that just because
you do not feel the pain, the anguish of another, does not mean it does
not exist. To ignore their struggles--our struggles--does not make them
disappear; it simply leaves you blind and the American family very
vulnerable. Some search so hard to explain away justice that they are
slowly wiping away who we are as a nation. We must come together to
fulfill what we all know is possible here in America--peace, love and
understanding. Fairness.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, before Senator Scott leaves the floor, let
me say to my colleague how much I appreciate his frank discussion
today. We are so blessed to have you and Cory Booker here. We don't
have enough diversity here--let me just be clear. As much as all of us
want to walk in each other's shoes because we each have different
experiences in our lives, it really matters who is in the room, who is
at the microphone, who is sharing the truth.
Senator Scott has shared a truth with us today, and I want to say
Senator Booker shared similar stories with us in our caucus, and it is
life-changing for us. I so appreciate everything you said, and it makes
us better to have you and Cory Booker here.
Race Relations
Having said that, Mr. President, I think it is important to discuss a
very similar topic, which is the status of race relations today,
because I don't think Senator Scott and Senator Booker should have to
be the ones to have to carry this forward.
Mr. President, when I was a little girl--I was 10--I came face-to-
face with ugly, vile, stupid, and dangerous discrimination. I cheered
on Jackie Robinson with all my girl power to counteract what my dad
said was hatred aimed at Jackie because of the color of his skin. And
how blessed was I when I worked hard with a Republican colleague to
make sure Jackie Robinson got the Congressional Medal of Honor.
When I was with my mother in Florida--the same age, 10 years old,
1950--I saw African Americans forced to sit in the back of the bus. I
got up to offer my seat to an elderly woman. She must have been 55 at
the time--I was 10--she looked old to me. I stood up and she refused
me. She said no, no. I was hurt.
I said to my mother: What is happening here? Why won't the woman take
my seat?
And my mother said: Segregation.
Well, growing up in Brooklyn, this made no sense to me. My mother
could have let it go; instead, she told me to follow her to the back of
the bus--not that anyone noticed, but we knew exactly what we were
doing. And I felt like a part of her team--part of a team against this
craziness where people had to go to the back of the bus simply because
of the color of their skin.
The civil rights movement has made enormous progress in our laws, but
the
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trouble remains in our hearts. There is too much hatred in our
communities. But let's be clear. Whether you are a police officer--
regardless of the color of your skin--kissing your family goodbye in
the morning or the parents of a young African-American teenager, no one
should ever have to fear that they will not see their loved ones at
night. Yet that is a truth in America--a truth that has been witnessed
by a couple of our Senators. No one should have to fear that they won't
see their loved ones at night because of this type of hatred.
Now is not the time to paint whole groups of people with a broad
brush because when you do that, that is the exact definition of
prejudice. You can't broad-brush a whole community because of the color
of their skin or their religion or whom they love, and you can't broad-
brush all the police in the police department.
What we need is a de-escalation of suspicion and an escalation of
trust--a de-escalation of suspicion and an escalation of trust. It is
long past time that we stood together united. It is long past time that
we look inside our own hearts, look inside our own souls, and banish
the hatred. We must instead embrace each other and God's creation,
because we--each of us--are God's creation. Dr. Martin Luther King
wrote: ``Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they
fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know
each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate
because they are separated.''
That is what Martin Luther King said--a man who taught us love, a man
who taught us compassion, a man who taught us nonviolence, a man who
taught us to listen to each other, a man who taught us to walk in each
other's shoes. So we need that conversation. We start it by breaking
down barriers that separate us, bridging the gap between communities
and law enforcement and establishing trust. Healing will begin in the
streets. It should.
Policing should be for the community, by the community, and with the
community. When I was a county supervisor in the 1970s, there were
police-versus-community issues. So I recommended, and my colleagues
concurred, in a new system of community policing. What does it mean? It
means you get the police out of a central precinct and you move them
into the community. Relationships develop. It seems so right. It works
so well that I was shocked when I got out of local government and I
realized that not enough communities were following that same community
policing method.
Where it exists, there is cooperation and true protection of the
community. It is an obvious step that should be implemented widely.
Well, what can we do? We can't force people to love. We can suggest it.
We can't force people to be tolerant. We can suggest it. But I think
there are certain things we can do.
I have introduced legislation with Senator Cory Booker. It is called
the PRIDE Act. It would start us off by getting statistics that we
need. How many shootings are there in our communities by the police
toward the community? How many shootings by the community toward the
police are there? Believe it or not, we don't really collect those
numbers. We would provide funding for States for the use-of-force
training for law enforcement agencies and personnel, including de-
escalation and violence training and funding for tip lines and hotlines
and public awareness announcements to gain information regarding the
use of force against the police. So it is a very balanced piece of
legislation that looks at the problems on both sides.
Secondly, we need to better support law enforcement agencies who work
to advance the practice of community policing. Now, we can do that by
increasing funding federally for the Justice Department's Community
Policing Development Program, which provides law enforcement agencies
with funding to implement innovative community policing practices. But
guess what; the funding for this critical program, which may well be
one of our most important programs, is $8 million a year. That is it
for the whole country. It is not enough. We need to do better.
Number three, we should provide dedicated funding for Justice
Department programs to initiate formal gatherings or summits to bring
community members and police into one conversation. Anyone who looked
at Dallas understands how hard they are trying, how much they have
done. When I saw President Obama with Mrs. Obama and President George
W. Bush with Laura Bush, I was so happy.
They are starting that conversation, the building of that trust, the
tearing down of that suspicion. One of the founders of Black Lives
Matter, Alicia Garza, said:
``We have so many different experiences that are rich and
complex. We need to bring all those experiences to the table
in order to achieve the solutions we desire.''
To anyone listening to Senator Scott or anyone who has heard the
stories or read some of the words of Senator Booker, we have a lot to
learn. A U.S. Senator was stopped--he said seven times; this is what I
heard Senator Scott say--in one year because of the color of his skin.
What? It is just too much for these people to bear. We need to help
them change policies that lead to this suspicion.
Yes, we have so many different experiences that are rich and complex.
We need to bring those experiences to the table. My friend the Senator
from Alaska is here. We are only 20 women out of 100 Senators. I think
our colleagues understand that we have brought something to the body.
We have brought our experiences to the body. It transcends
partisanship. When we are in the room, it is a little bit of a
different conversation. Not that we are any better, but we have had
different experiences. When our African-American colleagues tell us:
Look at our lives. Look at what we have been through. We have the same
job as you. Why are we pulled over seven times in a year? Why have we
been scared? Something is wrong. We can't turn our back on it. We can't
leave it up to just those two colleagues to lead us. We need to help
them, work together, and have this conversation that Alicia Garza says
we should have.
Number four, we must formally recognize and encourage police
departments that epitomize what it means to be a keeper of the peace--a
keeper of the peace. That is what they want to be--those officers who
attend community meetings after work, who spend their Saturdays playing
basketball with the neighborhood kids, who attend church services so
they can connect with the congregants, who take lower income children
shopping for toys and gifts at Christmas, who stop to check in on
residents just because they care. That is happening all over the
country. That is why we can't paint people with a broad brush. It is
wrong.
In my State, in the community of Vallejo, in the San Francisco Bay
Area, you should see what some of these officers do. They had a growing
divide between the community and the police. The police department knew
something had to change. So they invited the public to participate in
those changes. They held open-door community meetings. They created a
citizen advisory board to ensure residents' voices were heard. They
invited residents to experience their training simulator and give them
a new perspective on that police experience.
See it through our eyes, they said, and we will see it through your
eyes, and let's deescalate the tension and escalate the trust. They put
a high importance on the hiring of officers who had a connection to
Vallejo and wanted to serve the public. They even started a late-night
youth program at the local high school. They started change from within
that community.
So I think we should have a community policing innovation fund at the
Justice Department which would reward law enforcement agencies and
localities that are doing the right thing.
Lastly, I want to bring up that issue where everyone goes into their
corners. I beg colleagues not to go into their corners. We have to
address gun violence. Now, we know we can't prevent every tragedy. But
we can do some smart things while protecting the Second Amendment.
We don't need military weapons on the streets. They are weapons of
war. The family of the gentleman who developed these weapons said to
his family: I didn't develop them for people on the streets; I
developed them for the military and law enforcement. We can't have the
people who are protecting us outgunned. We don't need
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these weapons on the streets. There is only one reason--to kill as many
people as you can as fast as you can without reloading.
Don't tell me hunters need this. That is a bunch of baloney. The
people who want to keep these weapons on the street are the ones who
sell them. Let's be clear. The vast majority of people support this. We
can expand background checks--90 percent of the people support that,
even a majority of NRA members--so we can keep guns out of the hands of
criminals and the mentally ill.
We should prohibit the sale or possession of high-capacity magazines
and end the ban preventing the Centers for Disease Control from
researching gun violence. Have you talked to doctors who work in big
city hospitals? I have. They say: We are prepared to go to any war
zone. Those are the kinds of wounds they see. They tremble at what they
see. They mourn about what they see.
Somebody goes out to a nightclub. They hide in the bathroom. They
call their mother. They never see their family again.
My State of California has created a new research center on gun
violence to understand the impact of firearm fatalities and injuries
and, hopefully, reduce them in the future. It should happen at the
Federal level.
There are 30,000 of our people killed a year by gun violence. We lost
55,000 to 60,000 in the Vietnam War--a 10-year period. It tore the
country apart. This is 300,000 of our people over 10 years.
So I am going to close with this. There will always be bad people. I
have lived long enough to know that. There will always be bad people.
There will always be lost people. There will also be mean people. But
we cannot and must not allow them to poison this Nation wherever they
are. Good people--and that is most of America--must join hands across
every line that divides us--race, religion, color, creed, and, yes,
politics.
We must call out the racists, the prejudiced, and the haters--whoever
they are, wherever they are--even if they are in elected office. We
have to support those who believe in community, who believe in
community policing and not support those who refuse to admit that there
is a problem with profiling. Just read what Senator Scott said about
his life, about his fears, about what happened to him. Ask Cory Booker,
a Rhodes Scholar, what it is like.
We have to support those activists who bring us together, support
steps to improve our institutions, and reject those who inflame fears
on any side in which they are found.
We must speak out and support those who believe this is the United
States of America, not the ``Divided States of America,'' and we will
not allow this Nation to be divided by race, color, creed, religion, or
whom you love. I know America. I believe we will overcome. I want to
quote John Lewis as I close. He was beaten, bloodied, and jailed,
fighting for civil rights. He tells this story, and I quote:
``I saw those signs that said `white men,' `colored men,'
`white women,' `colored women,' `white waiting,' `colored
waiting.'
I would come home and ask my mother, my father, my
grandparents, my great grand-parents, `Why?'
They would say: `That's the way it is. Don't get in the
way. Don't get in trou-
ble.' ''
He goes on:
``In 1957, I met Rosa Parks at the age of 17.
In 1958, at the age of 18, I met Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and these two individuals inspired me to get in the way, to
get in trouble.
So, I encourage you to find a way to get in the way. You
must find a way to get in trouble--good trouble, necessary
trouble.''
That is John Lewis. We are blessed to have this hero, John Lewis,
among us in the Congress. We must listen to him because he is right. It
is our job to get in the way of prejudice and hate. We may do it each
in his or her own way. My way may not be your way, but our way is to
fight against prejudice and hate wherever we see it. Our job is to move
forward with respect and understanding, with tolerance and love.
Our Founders knew we were not a perfect union. They told us we had to
make a more perfect union. That is our job. I know we can do it, and we
must do it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
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